Spies making my life miserable?

[Mouthwash]

Spies will not leave my improvements alone. I'm pretty sure they're German, but I simply don't have the EPs to invest against him.

It says in the description that spies can help against other espionage units. So is this just referring to the counter-espionage mission or is there something I'm missing?

 

[MrKlew]

Spies increase the chance of catching an enemy spy in that tile by 50% I believe. So if you have a given city or tile you want to keep safe, placing a spy on it will help. If you need to protect a bunch of tiles, then I think counter-espionage missions are the most effective. Of course you still need to keep a few workers on hand, because eventually those spies are going to destroy something.

 

[rah]

AGAIN, I wish there was a worker automation option of 'repair sabotaged squares' If it's a resource the network automation will correct it but not for other types of squares.
This would make it less annoying. You could keep a handful of workers with this option and they could fix anything in a turn or two and you could ignore it.

 

[Mouthwash]

Do spies have supply costs?

 

[Agent327]

No.

Spies will not leave my improvements alone. I'm pretty sure they're German, but I simply don't have the EPs to invest against him.

It says in the description that spies can help against other espionage units. So is this just referring to the counter-espionage mission or is there something I'm missing?

Having your own spies in certain locations will increase the cost to sabotage on such a location; also it will increase the chance that an enemy spy is uncovered before doing any damage.

As a general rule however I´d say your espionage rate is too low. If you´re sure they are German spies focus espionage against Germany.

Also, buildings that up your espionage will decrease enemy succes rate slightly (as well as adding to your general espionage).

 

[civvver]

You shouldn't need to put the slider into espionage though, just build some jails/intelligence agencies. What era are you in?

 

[Mouthwash]

The AI seems to be good with spies (I am playing with improved AI) They target critical roads like the one connecting my Stone city to the rest of the empire (was building the Pyramids), not to mention pillaging my marble (bye-bye Oracle), and continually destroying my elephant resource, depriving me of military. I have to station units on all of them and it is extremely irritating.

 

[Teoes]

The moment you're informed of a spy's actions, jump into the espionage screen. One AI will have a yellow negative number next to their point ratio with you* and that'll tell you who performed the mission - whether you caught their spy or not. Now you know who's spying on you, you can direct your EPs at them to increase the cost of their future missions. Counter-espionage missions I also find to generally be cheap and effective.


*Actually is that in vanilla BTS or is it a feature of BUG/BULL? That long since I installed it that I can't remember...

 

[Mouthwash]

The road to my copper mine was just pillaged, but I see no negative modifier by any of the AIs in the espionage screen.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

That's only in BUG.

If you don't see the changing EP/T and have BUG, check the settings screen.

If you do see the changing EP/T but they're all positive, that means someone is generating more EPs than they spent killing the road, which isn't ridiculous. Check next turn and see if someone has a ton of EPs going against you.

 

[rah]

Yeah, just jot down the numbers for 3 turns, and you get a good feel for how the AI have their percentages set.

 

[capnvonbaron]

If you're in a continents game, I find its best to focus all your EP on only the AI on your continent. I have yet to have an AI spy on my via boat.

Focus most EPs on your nearest neighbor, and still more if you have an enemy on your landmass. If all else fails, park big stacks of workers strategically around the empire to insta-fix any spy destruction since if you fix in on the same turn its essentially like it never happened.

 

[kazapp]

Spies will not leave my improvements alone. I'm pretty sure they're German, but I simply don't have the EPs to invest against him.

It says in the description that spies can help against other espionage units. So is this just referring to the counter-espionage mission or is there something I'm missing?

At the very least, you need to set your slider to 10% espionage, and put a spy in a good location (say, your border town; but I usually settle for my capital).

When BtS first came, I was enormously irritated about the new subsystem, and how it seemed to generate a lot more (and new) micromanaging tasks.

Now I've learned to live with it. But I guess I'm paying the price, since the above suggestion is more lazy than efficient...

 

[Archon_Wing]

The AI loves espionage, and it's too hard to keep up with them if you spread your EPs on everybody unless you want to match them in which case that will drag you down with them.

Run counterespionage, and focus EPs on people that are messing with you. If their ratio just dropped heavily against you, you know they did something to you.

Or just kill him. Vassals can't run missions against you.

 

[capnvonbaron]

Here -> some spy info

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/espionage_guide.php

 

[Elkad]

Keep roads connecting you to enemy civs to a minimum. Place spies on those roads at your border, one per tile. Assuming you don't have railroads yet, 3 spies can cover every possible stopping tile for his spies (for one turn), and have a decent chance of catching his spies before they ever get to your improvements.

Critical improvements (your only ivory, etc), should also get a spy parked on them.

And don't leave workers on automated or build trade network. They will quickly screw up your minimal road defense by spamming roads all over your borders.